


A study

by pelinal



Category: Dragon's Dogma
Genre: F/M, i just wanted to take a look at the both of them without committing to a full-scale fic...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 15:12:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18524089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pelinal/pseuds/pelinal
Summary: "Terribly peculiar. A young woman with a man's name, and a man's self-assured carriage, and the soft face of a maiden, and the wild dark hair of a—of a. . .dark-haired creature. And a spray of coarse freckles blown across the left half of her face. And a mangled foot.And Arisen!"





	A study

Peculiar girl, Icaro of Cassardis. Most peculiar indeed.

Reynard thumbs at the brittled journal pages, gone yellow with time. Terribly peculiar. A young woman with a man's name, and a man's self-assured carriage, and the soft face of a maiden, and the wild dark hair of a—of a. . .dark-haired creature. And a spray of coarse freckles blown across the left half of her face. And a mangled foot.

And Arisen! Impossible to miss for the way she always pulls and worries the ebon scarf about her neck, tracing the outlines of a scar through her armor. She says it hurts all the time. And then to most petitioners she smiles thinly and adds "but it's all right, really".

She offered him that same shallow smile, once, and then he bought her a drink at the Union, and all at once she was sobbing quietly into her tankard. "It hurts all the time. I say that and I say that, but I forget what it really _means_ , and it means _this!_ I have no _heart_ , Reynard!" It was a late, still night. Reynard has little desire to spread the tale.

Arisen. He was beating back a small army—what he likes to recall as a small army—of goblins on the way out of Cassardis, and she, armed with a shoddy wooden staff and nothing else, wrung herself between him and the onslaught and battered, clumsily battered and battered the accursed things until they cried defeat. And she wiped her hand on her fisherman's trousers and treated him to that bone-grinding, calloused handshake for which Cassardi men and women are known. "Icaro," she had said, simply.

He'd wanted, desperately wanted to remain glib. To heap empty praise on top of her and bring a blush to her fallow cheeks that he might walk away from the encounter feeling less humiliated. But she'd speared him with that perfect, frank smile and he'd gathered up the breath to say "Reynard. Thank you," and she was off, leaving him feeling just a little like a guttering sea-fish.

Eventually he'd ambled into Gran Soren to restock (and perhaps to invest in any anti-goblin measures) and she'd found him again, days later. It was then that the whispers began. Arisen. The Arisen is come. She bears a hydra's head. Icaro herself, though now with a keen-eyed, strapping pawn at her side, had hardly the look of a legend. She came to him toting the same old staff and dressed in the same old fisherman's rags, the taut, raw flesh of her wrecked foot pale against her sandal strap, until she saw him ogling and tucked it deftly behind her other leg. A ratty bandage upon her arm and a hydra's long, gleaming fang beneath her belt.

Well. Of course he'd had to have it. And she was his savior, so he'd only swindled her a little. Kept five-hundred in his pocket and bought the thing for two-thousand, not the twenty-five hundred it was worth. She'd seemed not to notice, or else not to care, and she took the money with the same imperturbable smile that almost, almost made him want to admit his crime and give her the rest of what she was owed. Almost.

Time passed, as time is wont to do. They collided time and again, like marbles. Too often. Someone must have been tilting the table, but he knows better than to bring it up to her. Not that he minds at all. Every time, without exception, she is fascinating. A character study. The skin was flayed partially from her foot by the Brine when she was seven. Her parents(—in their entirety—)encountered  the same fate when she was ten. And a half. She loved, loves, loved a Cassardi girl named Quina, but as lovers they drain one another. As friends, two pillars of strength. Friends, she had emphasized. As friends. It made his heart flutter.

For his part, he's related to her his share of personal tidbits. How peddling was never precisely his heart's passion. How he'd always wanted siblings, growing up. How he likes to draw--and that day is vivid, because she'd leaped from her seat and bothered Asalam for a slate and charcoal and begged him to take her portrait. He'd tried his best, tried to work through the strange nervousness that came to him as he dotted each freckle on the page. She saw it at last and gasped, giggled and showered flattery upon him, real flattery the sort no one had ever thought to afford his work, and he'd felt himself turning the color of a beet as her laughter deepened.

He said some harebrained bitter thing about his father, once, and she never let him forget it. Weeks later, she was scouring half Gransys for scraps of paper which, by all rights, should have long been dust. On the off chance.

Peculiar girl.

And there she'd stood this morning, finally looking like an Arisen in her steel mail, with the ensorcelled bow slung across her chest and a new staff topped with a gem that glowered like a wicked eye, wearing a harrowed, difficult expression. Despite everything, she'd always kept her hair the same way, short and lush, coiling out in every direction. Icaro rarely has the wherewithal to tell a lie. "I read them. I'm sorry."

"You should sit down when you read them", she was quick to add. "You know where I'll be if. . .if you. . .you know where I'll be."

A hundred thousand words had competed for an enclave in his mind. Thank you. What do they say? Do I want to read them? Thank you. You are a marvel. How do you know it's really my father? Where did you find them. I have no words, Icaro. Why should I sit down? A marvel. Truly a marvel. My dearest Arisen.

But she's made so bloody frank a man of him—she's made him something terrifyingly close to honest. "Thank you," he'd said, and embraced her more tightly than he can recall ever having embraced anyone.

Reynard breathes in deeply and unfolds the first page. It's like being jolted with magic every time. The same narrow, slanted print as he's seen times before—in old letters, kept in wrapped boxes by his mother.

_'Tis with heavy heart I leave hearth and home behind._

He has to bite his lip. Perhaps it's true that all men become their fathers.


End file.
